ASO Exam: OPSC Terms Allegations Of Protestors Baseless

Cuttack: After unsuccessful candidates staged protest over Assistant Section Officer (ASO) exam, the Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) comes up with a clarification on Thursday.

The commission says, “The allegations about the selection of candidates who were absent during exam are baseless & false.”

“A total of 1104 candidates qualified in the written examination which is approximately 1.5 times the advertised vacancy. The Commission, while preparing the provisional list of candidates for document verification and skill test, followed the provision stipulated in the advertisement which states that the Commission shall be competent to fix up the qualifying marks in any or all the subjects of the examination,”

As per OPSC, the minimum qualifying marks has been fixed for different category of candidates for each paper. Similarly, the answer keys were validated by an Expert Committee with due regards to the objections/ suggestions given by the candidates immediately after the examination on the basis of which the final evaluation was made. The wrong and ambiguous answers are pro-rated as per the policy of the Commission.

“The allegations by certain candidates in the mainstream and social media that candidates who were absent have been selected are baseless and false,” the OPSC statement read.

OPSC further stated that it releases the answer keys, cut-off marks, and individual candidate’s marks in the website after the publication of the final result which will followed in case of ASO recruitment.

“OPSC follows a fair and transparent policy in the selection of candidates. This is being followed in letter and spirit in all examinations including A.S.O recruitment. Merit is the only criteria for selection and the Commission strongly condemns any attempt to malign its fairness and merit-based selection criteria,” the statement added.

Results of the ASO examination published by the OPSC on Monday has drawn the exasperation of thousands of unsuccessful candidates.

Since the publication of the result, a large number of aspirants who claimed to have done well in the written examination but did not shortlist have now raised questions about the transparency in the selection process.

While some aspirants took to the microblogging site Twitter to express their anger over their omission and demanded the OPSC to make the result public, some aspirants held a press meet and staged a protest in front of Suchana Bhavan today.

Worth mentioning, this is not the first time that aspirants alleged the exam conducting body’s negligence.

In also 2019, aspirants who appeared ASO examination had also questioned about the transparency of the recruitment process.

Notably, the written examination for Assistant Section Officer (ASO) was conducted in three sittings on August 27, 2022. 1,48,888 candidates appeared in the examination as against the 796 advertised vacancies.